The in surge of multiple socket types and chipsets is getting a bit mind boggling these days. Intel is talking about more socket types coming in the near future while AMD seems to be sticking with the AM3 platform for a little while longer. As a reviewer it is difficult to keep up, lack of review units on the CPU side of things means we have to buy CPU's on a regular basis just to stay competitive. Thankfully companies like Asus are making this process less painful by providing noticeable upgrades to the motherboard side of technology to help us reviewers justify the constant CPU purchasing to ourselves. Today's motherboard is no exception, the P7P55D-E 1156 Motherboard is brimming with multiple extras that would make any enthusiast or hobbyist drool. Let's get into the meat of this motherboard and see what everything will mean for you, the end user:

Supplemental Information I could not entirely contain within the time restraints of the video:

PLX implementation:

This ensures SATA6G and USB3 performance under dual card usage configurations (ie: CrossFire-X and SLI). There is no need to enable special turbo modes to ensure you have the highest performance for USB3 or SATA6G as you would on competitors motherboard solutions. Users can just install their drivers and have it work as expected; without a PLX you would need to go into the bios and enable Turbo Modes depending on which bus you want the fast performance for ( either SATA6G or USB3 ).

In order to test this performance at home simply place 2 graphics cards in crossfire or sli and then measure sata6g performance or usb3 performance. The faster the SSD on either end the larger the difference you will see in performance. P55 boards without the PLX you will notice bandwidth is capped for the sata6g controller and usb 3 controller at around 200MB.

Software:

MemOK:

Is a dedicated hardware ic that work in pre post state. When the DRAM led locks indicating a memory related issue pushing the MemOK button will start a couple steps to attempt to resolve the issue.

1. First will relax the timings.

2. Will relax the frequency of the memory,

3. Will attempt voltage cycling

4. Last will be a mix of all three in attempt to post – if this still fails you would need to replace the dimm with another module because the memory is not performing correctly

In addition to the MemOK their is the QLED diagnostic system. Asus states that it is a much easier way to check for issues in a system build or upgrade than a debug code.

VRM:

This is based on Asus's Xtreme Phase Design, essentially this means that the VRM offers hardware based switching and unique phase angles. This ensures a clean power gradient across all loads. Additionally depending on the VRM load ( phase banks will auto switch ) from the maximum of 16 phase under heavy load down to as little as 4 phase when idle or under light load.

This is a feature that is important to us as it is part of our Xtreme Design philosophy that design matters on motherboards.

T.Probe:

This is purely hardware based and does not require any software. The software is purely for a representation of active state of functionality. To clarify T.Probe is the world’s first ic /vrm design which monitors per phase bank temperature, it can rebalance in real-time the phase bank loading based of temperature ensuring no one phase banks gets excessively hotter than another. This is important as different type of cases and cooling setups can greatly affect the VRM temperatures as well help manage heat from overclocks more effectively.

Heatsink Design:

These are actually part of the Stack Cool design which is Asus's high quality design to help minimize heat produced by the board, the backside heatsinks are in place to help dissipate heat from the drivers from the VRM which can heat up especially under overclocked configurations. Also to clarify stack cool 3 means 2oz copper with 4 layer pcb and stack cool 3+ is 2oz copper with 6 layer pcb. In addition there is more advanced heatsink designs for great heat dissipation.

Important Bios Features to Make Note of:

1. Superior fan controls – In unison with our Fan Expert Software in windows Asus provides the best fan controls of any board vendor out currently (as per our Asus Reps Statement)

2 Two modes for cpu vcore voltage - This allowing for the most efficient, and effective overclocking depending on your needs. 1 option is voltage offset which tracks the Intel VRD applying an offset voltage the other is the more common absolute vid option which provides a consistent high level of voltage.

3. Voltage options - users have the flexibility to manually enter the voltage as well as use the + or – keys some boards do not have this flexibility and can be more tedious in making this adjustments.

4. 3rd Party Support: Asus has worked closely with other software utility vendors to enable better low level support so there is an option in the bios to change how the addressing works to best support that application (ASUS application or 3rd party application. This would be in situation where users use something like CPU Tweaker or Memset etc as opposed to ASUS Turbo V EVO.

Turbo V EVO:

it is important we to note that it is a hardware based solution – without the hardware based IC on the board you would not be able to have the low level access to make changes and adjustments. Many overclockers use Turbo V in testing settings where they boot into windows and instead of constantly rebooting and changing in the bios they will set a define clock to boot into windows with and test things until a crash occurs knowing which settings work best to manually dial it in. Also for high end clockers there is a difference between bootable frequencies and frequencies that can then be set in windows this is where Turbo V EVO and its manual options also come into play.

Auto Tuning:

One thing to note that is of importance is Auto Tuning is the first application to work on multiple levels with included hardware. The adjustments made are made on a direct bios level and when in windows running through the process a full real-time stability test is induced to validate the stability of the overclock.

Xtreme Tuning:

If you want the quickest and easiest option you can use OC Tuner in the bios or Fast Tuning in Turbo V EVO. For special high memory clock tuning – set bios defaults enable AHCI for best HD performance for SATA6G and USB3 and then set DDR Frequency to 1600 and memory voltage to 1.65v. from there save your settings and boot into windows. Launch Turbo V EVO and then click custom you will have a new special Custom Tuning option DDR1600.

Make sdure if you are to purchase this board that you disable C-state When you are testing the abilities of USB 3 and SATA 6G.